Bring in the optimism

While reading the country's leading financial daily (or one of them), i came across the oft repeated headline -
'Are we in for another bull run?' (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/analysis/Are-we-in-for-another-bull-run/articleshow/5393337.cms)
I don't know how you react to the title, some would be curious and read further, others elated just at the thought of making more money and recovering the early losses, while others like me have a hearty laugh.
Its just that the question mark at the end says it all - noone has a f*%$ing idea about it at all.

Now, i'm not questioning the various facts and figures they might be quoting - the govt's revision of the growth target upwards, advance tax collections on the rise, world economies showing signs of revival, a minister resigning due to affairs not related to his office (oh wait, strike that one out, that was out of context i think), and my personal favorite - the fact that most of the stocks are on their 52 week highs, so they will go higher, right?
I'm not much of a finanical analyst, i'm still working on improving my class 5 maths skills, but there does seem to be something wrong with all of it.
To be fair, i guess they do advise the investors to proceed with caution, always the statutory warning appended.

Nothing like a piece of euphoria backed up by unwarranted optimism to go into the holiday mode, right?
So here's to another year of aloofness, have fun!

Cuttack - 3 November 2009

I was up at 5:30 in the morning for I wanted to see the sunrise at the Puri beach. The hotel was on the road parallel to the beach and in 10 minutes I was at the sea shore.

 Just a couple of fishermen getting ready to take their boat out in to the waters, and a couple of tourists at the beach.

The cool breeze in the morning was refreshing, but the venture was a bit of a failure as the sky was filled with clouds making the sunrise over the horizon a missed treat.

Nevertheless, the breeze was refreshing. When the sun did peek out from the clouds, it was almost 6:30 and it was quite a long way up in the sky. Nevertheless, you have to be there to witness the black and orange shades that the sunlight makes on the surface of the sea at this time, a long dark pattern, covering the lone boat that has entered on its daily business.

After breakfast, i settled the hotel account and headed 3 km off to the bus stand. Now Sanjog (the chap I met on the train and who graciously had offered to play host in Orissa) had asked me to meet him so that he would show me around the place. After a nice 1.25 hr ride in the bus, I reached the Cuttack, Puri and Bhubaneshwar junction (forgot the name of the place, poor memory). From here we began in Sanjog’s car as he proceeded to narrate the various stories of the land and the historical significance of the culture here. We made a stop at Mayfair, the posh place in Bhubaneshwar (so I was told) for a quick bite. Here my dear friend told me would be the venue of his marriage, when that happens. Nice place, a few pubs, eating joints and a small pond, didn’t have time to visit the entire place.

We started towards the vegetation, with hills appearing on either side after we had left the city behind. Strange how similar the fields seem whether it be north or south India, maybe not in terms of the exact shrubbery, just the feeling of vastness and minuscule existence at the same time that it arises inside you.

 This is what its supposed to be in all these travels, be there and not at the same time, enjoy it fully while forgetting the self!

First up on the itinerary – Manglajodi bird sanctuary. With scarcely any signboards on the road to guide us, we took a couple of wrong turns before we ended up on the correct road. The small village leading up to the sanctuary had some religious procession going on which almost blocked up the entirety of the small road we were on. Nevertheless, forward we went onto the narrow lane of the bird sanctuary. The road is sufficient for just one vehicle, and is sandwiched by water bodies. But the water here is visible only in very narrow streams, on which you can see the sleek boats navigate. The weeds and other water plants are so thickly arranged that it almost gives an illusion of the boat rolling along on plants, almost.

As luck would have it, the birds are there, but its afternoon; not the best of time for them to be entertaining tourists, so we had to really squint under the sun to see the groups of birds hiding in the thick undergrowth. Here we met an XLRI passout, who was working on the conservation and awareness about the small sanctuary which is largely unnoticed next to the bigger Chilka lake nearby. The small channels from here join the Chilka lake, and we were tempted to try it with the few boats going that way, but have to keep to the schedule.

Lunch at a roadside dhaba, long time since I last ate sitting next to another human, maybe 4 months. Next, Sanjog took me to his ancestral village. Apparently, his grandfather has been quite instrumental in the upliftment of the small village and is a respected figure. Got to eat homemade kheer prepared by his grandmother, which provided some relief to my pining sweet tooth. I took the grand tour given by the grandmother, the small granary, the old storage room, the hall where the villagefolk would assemble to watch TV, and the ‘gaushala’. Though the last one now houses only 1 cow. Its beautiful here, fresh air, stand at the terrace, and just gaze at the village.

Time to push further, but it started raining heavily, so we had to curtail our march forth for the day. Instead we headed back to Cuttack. Its amazing how every weather in the countryside seems to have its own charm, even the dark skies and the downpour accompanied by the strong winds seemed beautiful.

Now, I normally would never accept an invitation from a stranger to stay at his/her place. Strangely this was the first time that I was offered a chance to do so, and I said yes. You don’t usually invite a stranger to your home either, unless you are the Texas chainsaw hacker or maybe Mother Teresa. Turns out, Sanjog is neither, much to my relief, on both counts!

So we hit Cuttack in the evening and after freshening up at this place he took me out to see the city. First we stopped at the famous club where his father was playing snooker to park the bike. From here on we proceeded to the fair – ‘Ballijatra’ to be precise.

Fortunately, I had landed up at the time of the festivities, celebrations relating to the trade between India and Bali in yesteryears (citation needed, poor memory again, pretty sure Sanjog had told me the entire story). We were in time to catch the procession of the exquisitely made pavilions, various deities in so many colors and the bright light, along with the deafening music, all completed the festive mood.

 Apparently, most of the shops in Cuttack set up a stall here for the festival; I saw stall of food items, right next to mobile phone and Reebok stalls! We enjoyed the ‘maut ka kuan’ – the first time I was seeing it in person, and this one was really nice. 3 maruti cars (yes cars), and 3 motorcyclists simultaneously doing circles in the 2 storey high wooden frame. Standing there, I could feel the frame shake considerably as the performers went on with their show. They even took money from outstretched arms of the audience while circling near the edge, steering the car with the feet with the upper half out of the window! Now that was some show.

The stalls are incidentally right next to Mahanadi river bank. Sanjog told me that the river that looked so immensely wide in the night time swelled up even more in the monsoons, engulfing the area where the stalls currently stood. Nighttime, standing next to the dark waters of the Mahanadi, barely able to see the opposite bank, with the lights shingling on my back from the stalls behind me, and I forgot all that I might have missed due to the rain in the day.

And the day ended with homecooked food, some sabzi that Sanjog’s mom had made, delicious. Surprisingly, all moms seem to be brilliant cooks, and his parents were so hospitable putting up a stranger at their place.
 Lights out at around midnight, day well spent at Cuttack.

Konark Sun temple & Jagannanath temple at Puri - 2 Nov, 2009

I made it to the Konark express with time to spare, and as usual with a guy traveling alone; I had the side upper berth. The guy further down asked to see my book (it was Enneagram by Richard Ruso and Hudson), a book I had been trying to read for the last 2 months. Turns out he was a recent law Graduate from SIBM who was traveling home to Cuttack. Surprisingly, I struck up a chat with Sanjog, which carried on till past midnight, from the time the train started at 9:30 from Vizag.

The young chap seemed quite wise for his age, he had a clear notion on almost everything (though I’m sure he’d argue vehemently on this point), ranging from his personal life, his job, studies, future, the environment, whatnot! Strange, I’m a full blooded introvert, all my MBTIs have affirmed that fact, and I ended up in this long conversation, on a train, with a complete stranger. To be fair, though, I was the one doing most of the listening, as he explained to me his aspirations for anthropology. I was quite taken in by the effort he was putting in to get to a good institute, a few articles published in the newspaper, had assisted in tribal projects in Orissa, was in touch with people in different institutes he wanted to get to, even gone to meet a dean of one German institute in Bombay! And the young lad was quite passionate about the culture in Orissa, the natural beauty that was being deteriorated, lack of proper representation of the state people in the political environment, et al. He even pointed out a couple of hills in the darkness of the night as the train entered Orissa.

My entire 3 day itinerary was changed by him as he even volunteered to show me around the next day. I would’ve gotten down at Khurda junction at 3:50 am, looking for something to get to Konark (he informed me that most buses do pass through Bhubaneshwar only, so I better get down there itself). At Bhubaneshwar he dropped me off at the bus stand, even went to the effort of getting me into the right bus for Puri, which I’d have been unable to locate in the early morning and with the language handicap.

I bid him goodbye for the day here, promising to meet him the next day, as the bus started off on the 60 km road to Puri. I could make out the white lotuses at 5 in the morning, as the Oriya folk dvd blared off in the bus. Not that I don’t appreciate music, but I can’t bloody well bear this after a train ride, this early in the morning. At around 6:30 the bus dropped me off at the Puri bus stand. The autos are their usual self, 40 bucks for 4 km to the beach road, where I had to dish out 700 bucks for a room, one of the cheaper ones I could find. A lot of hotels on this road, which runs parallel to the Puri beach.

After a bath and breakfast, I headed out to the bus stand. Surprisingly, there are no bus services to Konark as I found out, the ones that go are the small tourist tempos. The auto chaps ask for a fortune for the 36 km travel here. So I asked around till I got to the end of the road, opposite from the main bus stand where most of the tempos are; they should really put some signs or something here, the small shops on the road hide away the tempos from the road. About 1 tempo in 30 minutes, and the conductors are the king. They make you wait 15 minutes before letting you into the carrier, or even give a ticket. I jostled in, the place was absolutely crammed, with no place to sit now. The bus was up to 350% seating capacity, no kidding, I was almost standing on my toes here, and covered the 36 km in a leisurely 1 hour.
Now I had high hopes from the temple, but even in this late morning heat, it was thronging with visitors, a lot of Bengalis and a few foreigners thrown in.

The 400 meter long street from the main road to the temple gates is laced with small shops, most of them selling cloth bags, lampshades, and the rock and wood replicas of the temple. The colors and the vibrancy here remind one of Delhi’s Janpath market. The temple is huge, I’ll give it that, you can quite easily fathom the magnitude of effort that’d have gone in the construction.

At the front of the temple you get to see the ubiquitous lions guarding the gates, and a small pillared structure before one enters the main temple.

I visited each of the 24 wheels on the walls of the main structure, 12 on each of the 2 sides, completing the chariot which was supposedly made to travel to the gods’ abode. It’s a pity that I couldn’t capture 12 in one snapshot, the wide angle is not enough here, so you can get the horses and a few of the wheels.

 Each of the 12 wheels is intricately carved out, and there are a lot of different designs that you can keep on admiring for a long time.

The temple interior is blocked away, which I later came to know was to support the structure after excavation. So I proceeded on up the flight of stairs to the first level of the temple where you can see 3 big statues at the sides and the back of the temple, resembling Buddha, not sure what it was.

The garden surrounding the main temple has a couple of other structures as well, some with little crocodile and other strange carvings.

The carvings on the walls of the temple are quite good, some in pretty good condition still, but there seems to be some big renovation work going on one side of the temple, which spoils the view.

 And if you thought that you had to go to Khajuraho to see naughty carvings, well you were wrong, these were here in plenty. Even on the spokes of the wheels, you could see that the poor stone carvers had only one thing on their minds, jeez!

But at some places, you have to feel for the condition of the temple, where the carvings had to be cut down in order to repair the entire structure, thus rendering it a bit weird.
I finally took a long walk on the border wall of the temple compound, and beneath the trees you can still see some of the remains of the pillars of the temple, which seem to have been discarded now, and took a snap of the entire temple one last time.

The bus, ahem, tempo back was as uncomfortable as it was at the onward journey, and I wasn’t able to see much of the Konark beach that the road was running parallel to. I’m a guy with average Indian height, but it was weird, I seemed to be the only person having trouble standing upright, with my head stuck to the roof of the tempo. Nevertheless I made it back to Puri in one piece and after catching some cricket action on the television and a sumptuous meal, I headed out for the Jagannanath temple at 6:30 pm.

I was told by the hotel staff that since it was a full moon, there’d be a lot of visitors. No kidding, the rickshaw chap had to stop 200 meters before the temple entrance on the main road. Seems that the police had set up barricades and had stopped traffic for a stretch on the main road itself due to the pujas. Well, I got to the temple, deposited my camera, phone and shoes outside, pity no photos inside. I seemed to have come at the lull time, for by the time I got out an hour later, around 7:45, the line at the entrance had gotten huge, almost 150 people waiting and a lot more on the streets. Inside the temple you go up the wet steps and there are a lot of people, the pandas (the pujaris here) who cajole you for some pujas. I passed all and proceeded to the temple compound, there are a lot of different deities here, and I cannot for the life in me remember even a couple. The structures here might not be as flattering as at a few other places, you are simply left in awe of the devotion that the people have, waiting for a glimpse of the almighty’s idol, prostrating at the steps, mumbling prayers all the way, just sitting in the compound gazing forth.

I really did want to see the main deity, but there seemed to be a mad rush of people wanting to do the same, with the cops trying to keep some order. I decided to give it a miss instead of waiting an hour to take a glimpse of the deity, not at all religious am I? but I did take with me the Prasad offered here, called ‘Abhada’, they give you some sweet rice, some daals, some vegetables in mud handis, and quite a lot of people I watched it eat right there. Normally, I don’t take the Prasad at temples, but Sanjog had told me to try it, as I wouldn’t find it anywhere else, so I paid 20 bucks and took the smallest of the ones, there were big handis worth a lot more, but I just wanted a taste. Not bad at all on the tongue, and I finished it off in a couple of minutes, the sweet flavor mixed well with the salty pulse and other stuff.

With the evening waning off, I proceeded to take a couple of snaps of the temple from the road, and headed back to my hotel bed for some well earned rest.

Ahhh…..the good life

So I heard something good the other day – 2 of my very good friends who had been under voluntary unemployment for quite a few months now just re-entered the labor workforce. One of them got into a franchise business, and the other joined a recruitment agency, neat right?

I visited the office of the former in Delhi, and ‘I was surprised’ would be an understatement. During the course of a couple hours only I witnessed the electricians getting numerous strict instructions, Reliance broadband people being shown on where the cables would enter the office walls, the poor cease-fire guy getting a shunting for putting up the cease-fire a few mm off, the HDFC bank account opening chap made to run to conclude the process, and a guy from LG interviewed for supervising the office. And all of this interspersed with numerous calls to god knows who all! This was all quite a pleasant site.

The other got into a placement agency in Calcutta (haven’t quite gotten used to Kolkata, or even Mumbai), and now, after months of talking to consultants regarding his placement, would be interviewing other chaps on the prospective market. And this from a fellow who had been quite down everytime I had spoken to him over the last year or so, so naturally, this was also a welcome incident.

And the third thing, back to visit dear old Delhi, what can I say, it has its charms –
1. The first one is mom’s cooking, without a doubt THE best in the world (just like everyone reckons their respective mom to be world’s greatest chef). Case in point – Makke di roti, te sarson da saag, complete with onion and jaggery on the side, deeeelicious.
2. The Connaught place and Kamala nagar markets, always crowded any time of the day, any day. The numerous small shops in the bylanes of kamala nagar, full with the college going kids, and the small eating joints mixed with the apparel shops, everything’s here.
3. The traffic snarls, and the oh so missed SMOG on Delhi roads. I read in the paper the other day that nearly a 1000 new vehicles are added to the metro roads daily, so obviously there is traffic. Even the metro I traveled in non peak hours was full to the hilt, wow.
4. The small vegetable carts at the side of the roads near my home and the harassment by the association of the street peddlers to give them money for the place occupied. I got to witness one of these incidents in front of me as I had gone to buy some groceries, some things never do change I guess. Well, the slums also are there still, right where I left them.
5. And the company of brainy minds such as this one here.

So, life at the moment is good.

Yarada Beach - 1 Nov, 2009

Was quite tired so I woke up at 11:30 to start off for Yarada beach. The RTC bus complex in the city is about 3-3.5 km from the train station and that’s where I headed. The auto quoted 300 bucks for the 30 km or so journey, which I laughed off (I later got to know its steep hill in the middle and very few buses plying on the route, so the quote was a bit justified). Since all the directions at the bus stand were in Telugu, I had to do the unthinkable as a guy, ask for directions. I sincerely apologize to fellow menfolk for this gravest of sins, but it was unavoidable. The traffic cop knew nothing, the people at the hotel knew nothing, finally the chap at the small, hidden enquiry center at the RTC complex helped me out.

So up I went on to the # 400 bus to a place called Scindia, next to the Naval base;7 bucks and 30 minutes and I’m there. Here another bus conductor told me to take the # 16, apparently the only bus plying to Yarada village. There are a few shared autos, but the ones I asked did not want to go to Yarada, and the non sharing ones asked 200! I waited for almost 50 minutes for that elusive red and white striped, 2 ton beast, and I finally sighted the rare creature at somewhere around 2 pm. (make sure you plan right, the #16 only comes once every 1.5-2 hours, I checked this with the conductors and the route timings pasted inside the bus, so if you don’t have your own conveyance, be sure to check these timings).

In scrambled all the people, who appeared out of thin air. Villagers with their daily wares, and a guy carrying a bi, dead hen, a smelly one to boot. I jostled and got inside, my days in the Delhi 100 # had prepared me for this. The only difference was that the latter one had a lot of good looking, nice smelling college kids, while this one, well, let’s say soap is an unheard of name here. The bus took 40 minutes to get to Yarada, most of it going up a steep hill, and then down on the other side. The road was so narrow that the bus had to back to the relatively wider bends once to let another vehicle from the opposite direction pass. The bus grunted as the driver kept it thankfully on the road, what with the overflowing capacity. At the top of the hill, there are a few apartments for defense personnel, and a small AP tourism resort, called ‘Dolphin’s cove’. The board here said 1.5 km to Dolphin’s nose, and timing for public 3-5 pm, strange! If you want to go to the nose, the bus drops you here as it carries on downhill to Yarada village. The bus stops at a couple of places at the village, doesn’t really matter, as the village road runs parallel to the beach, 10 meters away. There’s no sign of a bus stop, just a corner tea shop that signifies the bus stand here.

Whether it was the 3 pm sun or the distance from the city, there was absolutely noone at the beach. There were 3-4 villagers fishing at the beach, but that’s it. the beach was much cleaner than the usual commercial ones you get to see, with a large green patch that’s sometimes there on the beaches. The hills on the western side, and behind the village present quite a view, with the sun just above them right now.

I took off my shoes and started my walk on the beach. It’s quite relaxing, when the sand is not that hot, and there’s a little breeze, with nobody around t bother you. The beach further on curves to the left, with the hills right next to it. The sea next to the shore is filled with small rocks jutting out, and here is where I sat down and relaxed.

Amazing feeling, sitting on those rocks, with the waves lashing past you, getting a little drenched is fine that way. It’s a perfect place to sit and while away the time, you can recline either on these rocks or on the sand, and watch the green-blue water go back and forth. The small hill offers some shade as well, where you can lie down on the sand and forget everything. Further ahead you can see the Dolphin’s nose jutting out into the sea, with the lighthouse also visible.

I wanted to walk all the way to the cliffs next to it, but though better, as it would’ve taken some time and I didn’t want to lose my bus back. So I sat there close to the coconut trees lining a part of the beach, watching the waves come and go before I headed back at 5:30.

 On the way back, I did the idyllic activity that I do at most beaches, look for seashells, which were there in lots of colors at this beach. Had a tea at the bus stand as I waited for the bus to take me back to Vizag. It had gotten a little chilly too towards the evening, and the village folk were all staring at the lone guy in the shorts standing at the bus stand! The dolphin’s nose had to be given a miss, but the beach was one of the most peaceful places I had been to so far, and another tiring day came to its close with some sandwiches and on to the station at 8:30 to catch the train to Bhubaneshwar.